He started, it turns out, as he meant to go on. The Millennium Stadium roof will be closed on Ireland and Canada on Saturday afternoon. But Jamie Cudmore will still seek out the shadows. That is where the second-row enforcer does his best work, where he sees clearest, where, in the yellow of Clermont Auvergne, he has had such a devastating impact on Irish hopes in the past.

Sean O’Riordan

German aviation investigators are beginning to analyse the flight recorders of the two planes that collided over Germany on Monday night, killing 71 people.

Clint Eastwood took his eight-year-old daughter home from a hospital in Vancouver, Canada, after her narrow escape with Eastwood’s ex-girlfriend from a Christmas-morning house fire.